At first glance, this rockabilly Batmobile looks like a retro-fetishist's pet project. It's not. In fact, this freak machine, hand-built by a ragtag team in an Illinois town of 1,200, is the deepest look into the future of cars you've ever clapped eyes on. One frigid day in Brooklyn, Gizmodo buckled in for a ride.

The Seven is sweeping: as long as a full-size pickup truck, as slender as a Toyota Prius, and low enough to rest my elbow on the roof. The arcing fenders exaggerate the comic book proportions, while chrome headlight trim from a 1937 Ford, spun aluminum wheel covers, and that sinister matte finish nod to the early days of homebrew hotrodding.

The carbon fiber and kevlar body took shape in a sketchbook, the rise and run of the curves guided by Kevin's imagination and pages he photocopied from an ancient textbook on aerodynamics. It's draped over a frame of steel tubes that were heated in a wood stove and bent to shape by hand. "We'd just grind and muscle it into shape," Kevin said. "One of the guys [from MIT's X Prize team] said, 'they just beasted this thing together.' And that's what we did."

The bizarre exterior gives way to a more familiar looking cockpit when you climb through the gullwing door, a feature Kevin opted for simply because he could. There's a climate control system, a radio with auxiliary input, even cupholders for the front and backward-facing rear seats. Oh, that's right; the rear seats face the cars behind you.

The grey felt-upholstered interior is about as roomy and well-appointed as a ten-year-old family sedan, and a ten-second lesson on the rotary knob that selects Reverse and Drive is all anyone would need to drive it.

Once we're rolling, though, the familiarity of 100 years of petrol-powered automotion melts away. Crawling around double-parked cars on a cobblestone street, the electric motor's note is nearly imperceptible, a faint whirring underneath the slap of the tires against the crumbling road. Cruising between stoplights, it makes a noise not unlike a quiet vacuum cleaner, if vacuum cleaners could accelerate four grown men and 2,900 lbs of car down a city street. It sounds similar to a Prius in electric-only mode, though maybe a tad louder. Compared to the shuddering, coughing taxis around us, the Seven's motor sounds downright pleasant.

Then traffic opens up, and Kevin drops the hammer. The Seven accelerates with surprising authority, thrusting ahead on a wave of instantaneous torque. Now the vacuum cleaner is pissed, emitting something approaching a high-pitched growl despite not being powered by dead dinosaurs. Illuminati Motor Works says the car will do zero-to-60 faster than Subaru's BR-Z sports car. I believe it.

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The acceleration is impressive, but not nearly as much as the environmental bits and bob. In official EPA testing at a Chrysler facility, under the same stringent conditions used by the major car manufacturers, the Illuminati Motor Works Seven clocked in at 207.5 MPGe. That's right: this 200 horsepower jalopy, built by a group of amateurs in a pole barn, can travel over 200 miles on the amount of electricity equivalent to a gallon of gas. It also does a verified 130 mph, seats four six-footers, and can fit a golf bag in its befinned trunk.

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Kevin Smith at the wheel of his invention

It's legitimately hard to believe. "When [Illuminati team leader] Kevin first told me what the car could do, I thought he was full of shit," Jason told me after my joyride. "But I thought it was interesting enough to follow him, cause if he could do it, what would that mean? If a guy in a barn, working with a couple of friends on the weekend, could make a 200 MPG car, with a 200 mile range and 130 MPH top speed, then why couldn't the big auto companies do it?"

The Illuminati Motor Works Seven isn't going to steal customers from the big companies any time soon. Kevin has $200,000 of his own money wrapped up in it—"two Teslas" in his terms—and while he jokingly told the constant stream of curious onlookers that "anything's for sale for the right price," he's probably not parting with it. Besides, one jerry-rigged wombat on wheels isn't going to uproot the industry.

In truth, it's barely even a prototype; it's a notebook sketch that jumped off the page and onto the rural roads of Illinois through sheer gumption and delusional optimism. But the Illuminati Motor Works Seven shows us just how much is possible beyond what manufacturers are offering us today.

Kevin Smith is convinced, obviously. So is his wife, who bought an electric Mitsubishi i-MiEV to park next to the Seven. Jason Fagione, the author who started this journey as a skeptical non-gearhead, tells me his next car will be electric.

Looks like the future is headed our way. With swooping fenders and gullwing doors.